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Petrosjko wrote: Why, just the other day I saw George Lucas on the corner, offering fellatio for five dollars. Poor guy.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Technology may soon spell doom for the big blockbuster, predicted the king of blockbusters himself -- George Lucas.

Speaking at the grand opening of his brand new Letterman Digital Arts Center here in San Francisco's Presidio national park, Lucas said the internet and digital distribution will force Hollywood to refocus on smaller projects.

Theatrical and licensing revenues from the six-part Star Wars series have topped $13 billion and continue to grow, but Lucas believes the days of such high-budget epics may soon be over.

"I'm not doing $100-million movies anymore," Lucas said on Saturday. "I'm more interested in smaller ones. Each time you do a $100-million movie, the chances are greater that you're not going to make your money back."

He added: "Box office numbers have been going down since WWII. They're on a slide and will continue to be. The profitable areas are now television and DVD, and the entire paradigm is shifting dramatically," Lucas said. "People will always go to theaters, because they will always like a social experience, but I don't think it's going to be as big as it is now."

Lucas said he will not be alone in Hollywood. The growth of home theaters, new delivery mechanisms and alternative viewing devices like mobile phones will inevitably alter moviemaking.

"The big tent-pole movies will be the first victim of the rapid technological changes we're seeing now," he predicted. "We're just not going to see those being made anymore."

The shift from big-screen epics toward television and mobile devices is also inspiring an aesthetic shift, Lucas said.

"There is a difference between how you make things for big screen and small screen. When you're designing for DVD, you tend to end up with more close-ups, and your wide shots aren't so wide. I don't subscribe to that stylistic shift, but a lot of kids making movies now grew up on TV and DVDs -- not films in theaters -- so that's how they make movies. I prefer to make them for the big screen, and they tend to work out alright."

Speaking just two days before the Supreme Court's landmark MGM v. Grokster decision on file-sharing technologies, the longtime proponent of all things digital said Hollywood must figure out how to sell its wares online.

"We're in a transitional period with delivery of material on (the) internet, and piracy is (a) huge factor," he said. "Why pay for something when you can get it for free on opening day? There has to be an international effort. If they don't solve this problem of how to sell over the internet, the business is going to shrink, and what's produced will be more like TV movies. They'll be low budget, and there won't be as many of them."

When asked whether he believes that government should take an increasingly assertive role in legislating filesharing, Lucas pointed to the need for better ways to deliver content in fee-based systems online.

"This is bigger than a question of the role that federal government should take in antipiracy -- it's a social issue," Lucas told Wired News. "We need to convince people that creatives need to get paid or they can't create, and we need to short circuit the idea that all the money goes to corporations. This is an international problem that involves international governments, but also a cultural shift."

Built inside a refurbished military hospital, Lucas' 865,000-square-foot Letterman Digital Arts Center will be home base for the mogul's electronic game, licensing, promotion and online ventures.

Lucas said the new site will allow workers at Lucasfilm, Industrial Light and Magic, and LucasArts to collaborate more seamlessly.

More than 1,500 people will work at the center, connected by a high-speed fiber optic network that will allow fast, simultaneous collaboration. And while a lot of Lucas' staff will soon be working at the new headquarters, Lucas won't.

The Marin County resident prefers to avoid the pain of the clogged trans-bay commute, and will instead remain ensconced at Skywalker Ranch, where he's currently working on the Indiana Jones sequel and Red Tails, a feature about black fighter pilots in World War II.

"I'm going to spend the next 18 months squaring things away and producing projects I haven't had time to lo

patrik degan wrote:The shift probably won't happen quite as quickly as Lucas thinks it will, and the studios will be taking a huge bath in the meantime.